Will Routley and Andrew Pinfold emptied their tanks trying to beat each other to the top of Friday’s Tour de White Rock hillclimb.

But there was no argument when both riders were asked to rank the difficulty of the lung-burning race up from White Rock beach.

Despite racing their bikes professionally all over the world, Routley and Pinfold agreed that nothing compares to the leg melting 700-meter ascent up a 16 per cent grade to the top Buena Vista Avenue.

That goes double since organizers decided a few years ago to add some excitement to the race by making the top-5 riders from the first heat go back to the bottom for a winner-take-all drag race back up the hill.

At least Routley got to console himself with a victory after answering a late attack by Pinfold to win the grueling climb by a bike length.

“As far as prologues go, that’s 10 times harder than anything else. It’s terrible,” said Routley, a 27-year-old Whistler native now racing for US-based Jelly Belly Pro Cycling. “It’s just the right length that you can go hard all the way to the top and you kind of blow up right at the line. I don’t think I feel that loaded with lactate at any other time, and then to go down there and have to do it all over again. It is just punishment.”

Routley, who won the Canadian National Road Race Championship late last month, has plenty of experience with White Rock’s steep ascents. The former mountain biker also won the 2008 hillclimb.

“You almost want to not go 110 per cent the first time because you can save enough for the second time up,” he said. “I don’t want to go too slow and let someone like Pinfold sprint on the flat at the top and beat me, but at the same time I don’t want to take off too early because whoever starts it off too early everyone sits on him and goes around him. That’s what happened when I won two years ago and that’s what happened this time. You have to time it just right.”

Pinfold, an exceptional sprinter from the American United Healthcare Pro Cycling team, was hoping the pace would stay slow enough for long enough to allow him to win with a late burst. It was close.

“I attacked at the steep part knowing I could probably hold it to the finish and Will was just faster,” said Pinfold, who won the Tour de White Rock overall title last year. “As far as suffering for two minutes, that pretty much takes the cake. There are not many sprints where I just lie down over the top of my handlebars. I know I gave it my all when I do that.”

Routley was actually the second fastest up the first time, just behind the one minute, 42 second pace set by Nic Hamilton of Vancouver’s Trek Red Truck. But Hamilton finished off the podium after a late charge ended up just short – by the width of a wheel – of Shawn Bunnin from Kelowna’s Total Restoration Cycling, who threw his bike at the finish line.

“When it gets steep you’ve got to show your cards,” said Bunnin. “Will showed his and he had a pretty good hand. Then it’s just a fight to the line and trying to keep your lunch down. I laid it all down with 100 meters to go, but couldn’t shake Nic. He was coming good and I saw him coming out of the corner of my eye and knew it was going to be tight, so I kept a little in reserve for a bike throw and I guess it paid off.”

Total Restoration moved up two places on the podium in the women’s race, and it was perhaps fitting the winner was familiar with pain.

“Evil,” said winner Jessica Hannah. “Sometimes you are dreading it, especially when you hear you are going back up again and your lungs are still on fire. But once you’re on the starting line you are good.”

Hannah was second to Joelle Numainville’s two minutes and 14 seconds in the first race. But with the sun setting over the Bay in the background, Hannah wisely pulled away from Webcor’s Numainville, an elite sprinter from Quebec who recently won the Canadian Road Race championship.

“I just didn’t want to be anywhere near her in the last couple hundred meters,” said Hannah, a Kelowna native who won the BC Road Race championship in 2009 and was third this year. “So on that last steep pitch when everyone was slowing down a bit, that’s where I attacked.”

Lauren Roschen of the Vancouver-based Westwood Cycle trade team also managed to stay ahead of Numainville, who finished third. For Hannah, the painful ascents were nothing compared to being hit by a car in 2001, an accident that kept her from competitive cycling for seven years.

Hannah returned to race for Giant before moving to her hometown Total Restoration team, and has enjoyed success at the historic Tour de White Rock before, finishing third in the overall standings last summer.

“I like the hills here,” Hannah said.

After Friday night, she may have been the only one.

The 31st Tour de White Rock continues with the Maximum Collision Criterium Saturday and concludes with the Peace Arch News Road Race on Sunday.